Seasonal

At the store the other day I found some English christmas crackers, and thought it would be REALLY fun to make a traditional English Christmas dinner for my little family! I actually managed to find a huge leg of lamb at the store, and decided to roast it, with some traditional English roast potatoes, honey glazed parsnips, mint sauce, Yorkshire puddings, gravy and petit Pois. I got some sparkling grape juice, and we all sat round to eat and celebrate English style! We pulled the crackers, and wore the hats inside, told the jokes, and played with the toys! My kids LOVED it!!! I haven’t been home for Christmas for nine years, since i’ve been married, and I miss some of those fun English traditions I was raised with!

Tom Kha is my favorite soup in the whole world, so I have been determined to master the PERFECT recipe for it for ages!! At first, I tried making several recipes without the Tom Kha paste– and I just couldn’t seem to get the level of flavor I needed. So I went to the Asian Market and stocked up on Tom Kha Paste, and have been experimenting ever since– I didn’t just want to make the recipe on the back of the jar, by adding water, which you can do! Mostly because I wanted the recipe to taste as awesome as the ones you find in good thai restaurants. I have made SO much of this stuff recently that I thought my family and I would start to get sick of it, but somehow, the more I make it, the more I LOVE it, and…. I even managed to convert my two small kiddos! They are four and five, and the pickiest eaters on the planet, but they both picked up the bowl, and drank this soup down, and made me SO happy! I’m so glad I stocked my pantry with jars of this paste, because it has become a much-loved go-to meal for my family. It’s not only super delicious, but surprisingly filling and really healthy too! AND did I mention, I can make it in under 10 minutes?! I have some precooked frozen chicken that is already cut into bite-sized pieces to make this recipe SUPER easy and fast, as well as a carton of coconut milk always sitting in my fridge! Everyone needs fast, super simple, healthy, delicious recipes like this on hand! I hope you love it and make it as much as we do!

Yesterday as we were pulling out all the christmas decorations to decorate for christmas, I stumbled upon an old christmas cooking magazine that contains some of my favorite English recipes on earth!! A couple of years back I made a pork and potato roll from it, and it was so divine, I decided to make it again this year– but with a little twist– Cornish Pasty style! The salty, tangy pork, potato and onion mixture inside the warm, flaky puff pastry was the perfect thing for a cold, cosy autumn day inside with the family, who mostly all have rotten colds! This recipe was so quick, easy and delicious, i’ll definitely be keeping it close by this season, and i’m also super excited to share lots more delicious English recipes! So keep posted, and as always, enjoy this recipe!More

This summer we have been so busy that my blog has been totally neglected on an embarrassing scale! It feels good to finally be “settled” again, with a routine, and have more time to be consistent with my cooking and posting! I think fall is one of my absolute most favorite seasons for cooking– but it can be quite “dangerous” as I love to make a lot of comfort food for the cold, gradually darkening nights! One of those “comfort classics” I was determined to master this autumn, was chicken and dumplings! I found a recipe by Tyler Florence that looked awesome– but I didn’t have the time to roast the chicken, and make the home-made stock from scratch. I had a crazy day of running around town, and after getting in the door at 5pm with a car full of groceries and hungry kids, this dinner was quick and simple enough to put together while putting groceries away! It was ready, with next to no effort, in under 30 minutes, and it tasted like I had been working on it for hours! Gotta love that!More

A few weeks ago, when my husband and I were in Iceland, we stumbled into this little dive for lunch, on a black sand beach, in the beautiful coastal town of Vik. I ordered the lamb stew– not only because it’s one of Iceland’s most traditional dishes {that I wanted to try while I was there}, but also because I had heard SO many people rave bout it! {And also because I was freezing cold, and it’s just a great thing to warm you right up!) When they brought it out, it smelt and looked pretty good– but when I took a bite, I was in pure heaven! It was by far, the best thing I had eaten during my week’s stay in Iceland, and I would go as far to say THE BEST stew I had eaten in my entire life. The lamb was tender, juicy and flavorful, the broth was beefy, and salty with a hint of red wine, and they used buttery new potatoes, al dente carrots, and fresh petit pois. I took note so I could go home and recreate the recipe, because it’s one I wanted to eat time and time again.More

About Me

Hi, i’m Sarah. Welcome to “Mattawa Mum” a place for me to share my life as an English stay at home Mum of two, in a small American farm town known as Mattawa. Life out here in the middle of nowhere has been one hard adjustment--I used to live an hour from London, and now I live an hour from a decent grocery store, but I have found that working hard, keeping busy and learning all I can, help me focus on more positive things as I grow as a wife, mother, artist, crafter, photographer, home-cook and now “Country-girl!” I hope you stay a while, and find something fun to read, cute to copy, or good to eat!